Regarded alongside the Colosseum and St Peter’s Basilica as one of the ‘souls’ of Rome, the famous Spanish Steps are considered a global landmark.
But a cultural row has erupted after a report revealed the iconic staircase may not be Italian after all, nor indeed Spanish, but French.
Europe’s most famous staircase, which leads from the church of Trinita de’ Monti down to Piazza di Spagna, has now become the subject of an international dispute between old rivals.
It was ignited after France’s top auditor of public bodies earlier this month briefly mentioned the steps in a 107-page report into the management of France’s €200 million portfolio of property in central Rome.
In the report they claimed that the Spanish Steps, which were helped to fame in the United States by the 1953 film ‘Roman Holiday’ starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck, were built with French money in the 1720s.
A cultural row over the Spanish Steps has erupted after a report revealed the iconic staircase may not be Italian after all, but French
Europe’s most famous staircase, which leads from the church of Trinita de’ Monti down to Piazza di Spagna, has now become the subject of an international dispute between old rivals. Pictured in 1927
The Spanish Steps were helped to fame in the United States by the 1953 film ‘Roman Holiday’ starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck
Apparently unaware that it might be controversial on the other side of the Alps, the Court of Accounts said the status of the UNESCO site would ‘benefit from being clarified’.
But the claim has caused a public outcry among many Italians, who treasure the landmark and want to see it protected as a public space.
In 2019 a law was passed that banned tourists from sitting on the steps, with fines of up to £370 handed out to rule-breakers.
The vice-president of the lower house of the Italian national parliament Fabio Rampelli labelled the French claim ‘laughable’.
He then threatened to send experts to the Louvre to ‘make an up-to-date reconnaissance’ of the assets taken from Italy throughout history, referring to the paintings of Italian origin, most famously the Mona Lisa, that reside in France.
The French-Italian battles over art have a long history, with Napoleon’s men taking part in one of the largest single displacements of art in history during his reign.
Meanwhile the president of the report’s author the Court of Accounts, Pierre Moscovici, told an Italian news agency he was ‘really very astonished’ by the reaction to the report.
View of the Spanish Steps, Italy, 1749. This print by John Wilton-Ely depicts an imagined architectural feature from an etching by the Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi
In 2019 a law was passed that banned tourists from sitting on the steps, with fines of up to £370 handed out to rule-breakers
Rome also barred visitors from eating or drinking on the marble staircase
A police officer asks a girl not to sit on the Spanish Steps on August 7, 2019
The cast of Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One stand together on the Spanish Steps on June 19, 2023
He said: ‘I want to reassure our Italian friends … there is no intention to privatise or to empty the meaning that those properties have.’
To solve the dispute, historical experts have been called in, such as Gaël de Guichen who worked at the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property, an intergovernmental body from 1993 and 2017.
He told The Times: ‘Between France and Italy, it’s a bit like France and England. We don’t like each other very much, but we like each other anyway.’
Guichen explained that in the late 15th century King Charles VIII of France bought a hill in Rome’s northernmost edge.
It was there he and his son and successor Louis XII built France’s first royal convent on foreign soil and a church, the Trinità dei Monti or Trinity of the Mounts.
But the walk to the convent became muddy and steep, so between 1723 and 1726, France built a grand set of steps to make the journey cleaner and easier.
They were designed by an Italian architect Francesco de Sanctis but were adorned with the traditional coat of arms of France the fleurs-de-lys and marked with two plaques declaring their Gallic origin.
Tourists cool off in the Barcaccia fountain at the bottom of the Spanish Steps in July 2023
And as king, Louis XIV had planned to mount a statue of himself there, but the Pope scrapped the idea as too much of a French incursion.
The steps were primarily for French nuns and monks to climb the steps to the church, but in time, everyone started to use them.
The Spanish embassy was at the foot of the steps in the Piazza di Spagna, or Spanish Square, but they grew angry to see the great monument to an old enemy towering over them every day.
So they claimed the entire quarter for their own and sent police to guard the steps, causing English speakers to begin to refer to them as the ‘Spanish Steps’ over the centuries.
However the steps are not an isolated case and de Guichen claims ‘perhaps the majority’ of properties in the medieval centre of Rome are owned by other European countries.
Spain still owns properties valued at around €1 billion including about a quarter of the famous Piazza Navona (pictured in March 2020 lockdown)
The truth of that fact has long angered some Italians including Benito Mussolini who tried to seize them back.
This was because communities from around Christendom built villages of churches and hospitals in the area over the centuries.
Smaller nations built outposts, but richer ones like Spain built more. It still owns properties valued at around €1 billion including about a quarter of the famous Piazza Navona.
The English Venerable College, an old English Catholic seminary, still exists on the site of an English pilgrims’ house founded in the 14th century.
Source link : http://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=66f954bec10e43f7ad5c294a20c5a687&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailymail.co.uk%2Fnews%2Farticle-13904031%2FSpanish-steps-Rome-famous-Spanish-Steps-actually-French-Cultural-row-erupts-report-reveals-iconic-staircase.html&c=9724468949952712252&mkt=de-de
Author :
Publish date : 2024-09-29 06:18:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.